La cathédrale double de Rouen : état actuel du dossier

Jacques Le Maho, who conducts since ten years an excavation around the cathedral, presents in this paper a new hypothesis about early churches in Rouen. Before and after WW II, remains of the cathedral's Romanesque apse and a deep installation in front of the Gothic transept were found. It is not an Early Christian altar, as previously believed, but more likely a crypte baldaquin belonging to the tenth-century church. During the recent excavation, a church with three aisles and part of a portico were discovered north of the cathedral. This new church can be dated to the second half of the fourth century and lies over a later Roman domus, whose baths (including the hot room, but not the pools) have been reused. A 10m. wide rotunda (only the foundations remain) was later constructed inside the central nave. This construction cannot be the baptistery, that lies more to the south, according to medieval tradition, but more probably a Carolingian martyrium, maybe the one built for the relics which bishop Vitrice honors in a speech dated 395-396. In this homily, Victrice speaks of a new basilica, still unfinished, that might be the three nave church. In this case, the first cathedral of Rouen still lies under the present one. According to the ancient Medieval tradition, the northern church was dedicated to Saint Stephen, whereas the ecclesia had been to Notre Dame from the very Merovingian period.